


Now or Ever Again

by bysexualjohnwatson (phdJohnlock)



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Harry Hart Lives, Hartwin, M/M, no one dies in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-21 00:39:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3671034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phdJohnlock/pseuds/bysexualjohnwatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry is shot in the head under the bright morning sun.</p>
<p>Like a story on the news, no one but Harry knows that he’s alert inside his broken skull.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now or Ever Again

Most of the time, it seems, the chronically ill die at night. It’s unclear why, really. Maybe it’s nature, maybe it’s God. Maybe we work and toil our whole lives in a pattern, entering a rut, until even in our last hours we know deep down to wait to stop breathing, stop living, until it’s quiet nighttime. It’s more polite, that way. 

It’s not the case with accidents. Car crashes or muggings gone wrong happen all the time in broad daylight. Getting shot in the head happens in the daylight. Harry is shot in the head under the bright morning sun.

Harry doesn’t die, though.

Instead, he lives in blackness. Well, he literally lives. He does not notice that he lives for several weeks, while he is in a hospital in Washington, D.C. under a pseudonym, while the world goes insane. Tucked away in a room with no windows. It’s for the best, really. Had he known he was still alive, he might have changed his mind. If he’d known how hard it was going to be.

It’s actually while he is in the plane being transported back to London that he first becomes aware again. Probably not the best timing, in all honesty. The first thing that he realizes is that he is travelling far too fast, and it is the most scared that Harry has ever been. He thinks he is dying - that the shot just happened, and he’s… what? Going to heaven? Hell? Do those places exist? He doesn’t think so, but if he was dying then he would be finding out soon enough. 

The journey takes seven hours, and the plane lands stealthily on a private airfield. Harry remains immobile, frighteningly still and small-looking. As the medical team transfer him to a new bed, in a new room, he supposes that he must not be dying. He hears no voices that he recognizes, and he drifts back under.

He gets used to the darkness. Like a story on the news, no one but Harry knows that he’s alert inside his broken skull. He almost has enough awareness to hope that someone says something embarrassing to him, just so he can tease them later. Almost, but not quite. People do say quite a lot of things to him, though. Not the doctors. His doctors work efficiently and quietly, but they never speak to him. Instead they speak to each other, or to his visitors; it’s his visitors that carry on one-sided conversations for hours into the night.

He supposes that people come to visit him sometimes when he is not aware. He is aware that sometimes he’s asleep even within his sleep - meta-sleep, if you will. But in his pseudo-waking moments, he listens.

The first person he hears is Merlin. He’s not talking to Harry, but instead to someone who must be outside the door. Both voices are muffled, but Harry has known Merlin for going on thirty years. It’s enough to recognize that he’s there. Harry feels comforted by this small fact. 

Often, Merlin just sits and reads him the headlines. The world begins to rebuild itself under the watchful eye of the new Arthur, and Merlin helps Harry keep tabs. Once, though - Harry suspects it must be nighttime, although of course he can’t be sure - Merlin weeps. He slumps on the bed, body wracked with sobs, for a very long time. Tells Harry how scared he is, how much he needs him to pull through. Holds Harry’s hand and wets it with tears.Harry wants to wake up and tell him it will all be okay, but he can’t. Instead he just lays and listens. 

All the London knights visit at least once, that he knows of. Most of the time they are accompanied by Merlin, as if it might be too much for them without some sort of chaperone. Roxy (Harry never actually knew her as Lancelot, can’t bring himself to call her that even in his dream world) visits several times on her own, too. He feels fond when he hears her say hello and sit down. For all that he barely knew her, she’s kind to visit him.

Harry has been in his bed in London for nine days before Eggsy comes to see him. He barely speaks; the only way to tell that it’s Eggsy is that he makes a small noise of distress when he enters the room. From what Harry can hear, he stands still by the doorway for a long time before pulling a chair up next to the bed. 

Harry drifts out of pseudo-consciousness for a while - damn, but if he could only control it - and when he comes aware again, he thinks Eggsy is gone. He spends most of his time alone, and this is alright with him. Other people have lives to life while he teeters in limbo. Not living, not dead. Just there.

Eggsy is not gone, though. Harry gradually becomes aware of someone breathing, quiet and slow. Eggsy, slumped down in his chair, sleeps with his neck at an awkward angle and a slight trail of drool on his chin. His hand rests not an inch away from Harry’s on the blanket. Harry does not know this, but even so he finds himself remarkably touched that Eggsy has stayed with him all night. 

Since he can’t do much else, he spends most of his time thinking. He thinks about his early days in Kingsman, when he was rash and impulsive. Once, he’d gotten over-involved with a honeypot operation and ended up in a several-months-long affair with a Duke. He thinks about his childhood, and when his mother used to read him bedtime stories. He wishes for a bedtime story now, but his mother passed away two decades ago. He thinks about Mr. Pickles, and about his successor Cornflower, a Maine Coon cat. Cats are not the preferred pet of most Kingsman, but Harry is quite drawn to them. Cornflower’s aloofness had suited him just fine.

He also thinks about Eggsy, who visits him what seems like daily after the first time. Upon waking after that first night, Eggsy spends about an hour trying to explain where he’d been on a mission and why it had taken so long for him to come visit. Harry wants to smile at his earnestness. Tries to smile, but can’t. Remains still. 

Eggsy visits nightly and each time, beseeches Harry to wake up. He talks about what happened, after the church. Talks about the special status he was given after - in spite of - what happened between him and the late Arthur. Talks about how grateful he is for Harry and his faith in a sad, dead-end boy. Talks about how lost and lonely he felt while no one knew what happened in Kentucky. And once, after a particularly lively report that ended with an off-color joke about Sweden, Eggsy grabs his hand and squeezes it.

“Harry,” he says, and his voice is rough. “Ya gotta wake up. I don’t -” He stops, swallows. Tries again. “I don’t know what’ll do without ya.”

Harry wishes that he could reassure him. Don’t worry, my dear boy, he’d say. I’m in here and I think I’ll wake up. Doesn’t seem like I can control it. But he can’t say. Instead he remains quiet and still, and feels sort of empty. Although he’s rarely alone - Eggy spends most of each night with him, and during the day doctors check in hourly - he feels very, very lonely.

Once, Harry thinks that he is about to wake up. He feels… sort of odd. He doesn’t have a label for it, but then he’s never been comatose before. It’s like a rushing in his head. But instead of waking up, he begins to sink into nothingness. Oblivion. He is barely aware of machines all around him beginning to alert anyone nearby with a medical degree that Harry Hart is bleeding in a way he really should not be. He does not hear four surgeons rush into the room and bark orders to each other. He does not register any pain.

Eggsy registers nearly intolerable pain. Shoved out of the way, useless and terrified, he stands in the corner behind a chair. His hands shake violently. He doesn’t feel tears slip down his cheeks until he sees marks on the chair’s upholstery. But when he does see them, he feels his hot, flushed face growing damp in his panic. He has no options besides waiting. For a dozen millennia, he stands behind the chair in the corner. After a dozen millennia, he slumps to the floor. He is broken. All that Eggsy knows is that he cannot lose Harry. Not after he lived. He was going to _live_.

Harry sleeps for six days without becoming aware, but he does live. Eggsy does not leave him except to bathe. When he returns, he always smells like Harry’s shampoo.

And then, Harry wakes up.

Waking up hurts. Waking up is the most painful thing Harry has ever experienced. He has a vague notion that if he had any control over this, he might not do it.

It begins with a feeling sort of like being pulled. As if Harry was taffy, stretched long and thin between God’s hands. What was total blackness begins to regain - not color, but the idea of light. And pain in his nerves, everywhere. Like sitting on your foot too long and trying to stand, and feeling pins and needles. But Harry's pins and needles are like knives and swords, biting into his once healthy muscles. His entire body, waking up.

He slowly, slowly, slowly opens his eyes.

The whole world is blurry. It's obvious he's in a hospital room, but he can't make out much more than that. It might be mid-afternoon, judging by the light coming through the small window. Looking to his right (turning his head hurts, and he winces) he sees Eggsy. His heart seems to beat a little quicker at the sight of him, lost in reading through a mission briefing. He has not yet noticed that Harry is awake.

Harry tries to clear his throat. It doesn't exactly work, but he does make a rather embarrassing squeaky noise - unbeknownst to him, it is the first noise he has made since Kentucky.

Eggsy's eyes flick up to him, then back down, and then immediately back up.

"Holy fuckin' shit!" he cries hoarsely, and stumbles out of his chair to Harry's side. "Harry, mate, you really awake?" 

Harry tries to get out I think so but it can't escape his parched throat. Despite this, and despite that he is beginning to think he can't move his right hand, Harry smiles.

Eggsy returns a brilliant, wide grin. 

"God'm I happy to see you." Eggsy pulls his chair up close and leans in. 

He should call a nurse, but the thought slips his mind just momentarily. Lost in a sea of absolute relief.

Harry doesn't think he has seen Eggsy look this happy before. He feels a twist in his stomach. Guilt? Maybe. For making Eggsy afraid? Probably.

Eggsy leans close to him and takes his hand. Harry's fingers are cold and his skin is dry, but it feels wonderful. Harry blinks, trying to get rid of the blurriness, and thinks he can see tears spilling out of the corners of Eggsy's eyes.

"Eggsy," he tries, and he sounds like death but at least it's a word. 

Eggsy keeps smiling but presses his lips together. A small sob escapes, and he is suddenly pulling Harry's hand to his face, holding it there, pressing it to his cheek and then, quickly, placing a tender kiss on his palm. Harry's breath hitches. It is touchingly, unexpectedly intimate. 

Eggsy places Harry's hand back on the bed, getting himself under control. "Yeah, whaddya want then?" He continues to smile. Hasn't stopped smiling since he saw Harry's open eyes.

"Water, please," Harry managed to choke out. Now, in addition to his throat feeling drier than the Sahara, he has to contend with a small but stubborn lump in his throat. He does not think this is medical in nature.

The rest of the afternoon passes in a busy flurry of activity. Eggsy summons nurses and doctors and Merlin, and before they enter the room has scooched his chair just a foot or so further away from the bed. Perhaps he thinks it is more decorous, that way. Something a gentleman would do. Or perhaps he feels better able to handle his emotions when he is further from the source of them. One can only speculate.

The doctors examine him up and down and back and front, and express sincere relief that he woke up. They thought he might not. They especially thought so after he’d begun to bleed for no reason they could see, his poor brain giving up temporarily on healing.

Yes, his brain. Harry has been shot in the head, after all. Nasty business. The doctors shake their heads a lot while telling him. He got lucky. The bullet passed through his parietal lobe but did not damage any structures necessary for life. He will have trouble with the right side of his body, yes. He might feel tingling that he can’t find a reason for. He will definitely need a lot of physical therapy to regain any fine motor control. If you’re going to be shot in the head, they say, seems like the best way to do it is find a guy who’s too squeamish to aim properly.

Eggsy does not find this amusing. Eggsy asks the doctors to leave. They do.

Merlin sticks around for a while. He debriefs Harry as best he can given Harry’s general exhaustion, and then he clasps Harry’s hand and smiles.

“I’m so glad to have you back, Galahad,” he admits. “I was worried.”

Harry smiles at him fondly, although his eyes droop with oncoming sleep. “Never fear, old friend. I wouldn’t let you down.”

When Merlin has taken his leave, only Eggsy remains. He pulls his chair up to Harry’s left side - his good side, now - and takes his hand once again. He rubs it absently. So many things he wants to say, but Harry’s eyelids are growing heavier by the moment. He settles for the most important thing.

“Harry,” he begins, and Harry smiles.

“Yes, Eggsy?”

Eggsy’s heart swells and, embarrassingly, he feels his cheeks flush. “I just wanted to tell ya… well. You know, dontcha? You changed m’whole life. An’ I just owe ya. I owe ya so much.”

“Not at all, my boy.” Harry squeezes his hand lightly and his eyes drift shut. 

When Merlin enters the next morning, looking for Eggsy, he finds him there asleep. On Harry’s bed, curled up tightly next to him. He looks incredibly young and vulnerable. Harry’s arm is around his shoulders, and he rubs his thumb slowly in circles on Eggsy’s bicep. His eyes are still closed, but his mouth is curved in a smile. 

Merlin stops and backs out quietly. He supposes he can leave them be for another half an hour. He doesn’t know that Harry will wake Eggsy with a kiss on his temple, or that in three weeks when Harry is allowed to move home Eggsy will be there each evening to make sure Harry does his at-home stretches and exercises. Harry doesn’t know this either, yet. All he knows is that he doesn’t want to let go, now or ever again.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is un-beta'd, un-Britpicked. I left a lot of dialogue out because honestly I can't write Eggsy's accent for crap. I don't own this story or these characters. And I have never been in a coma of any sort before, so I probably got it really wrong how it feels to be in/wake up from one. Eh, that's alright.
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr at bulletproofbespoke. Thanks for reading!


End file.
